The seminar of an American poetess, Michelle Chan Brown, on the theme of “Become famous: How to write an epic poem (with care of Walt Whitman)” was conducted at S. Toraighyrov Pavlodar State University.

The visit was organized in the framework of the “PoetryPoezd” Project of the Consulate General of the United States of America.

At the seminar the works of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Abay Kunanbayev, (considered as philosophers-prophets, who used their native land observations to unite their fellow citizens and state clearly the perspective vision for national and at the same time many-sided originality), were examined.

“All three of them gave a start to a new literary style and important innovations in a language, which are echoed in succeeding generations from Allen Ginsberg and aytysses to Kanye West and new directions of a Kazakh hip-hop,” says Michelle Chan Brown, “They all considered it important to not only glorify their own nations and their originality, but also to use poetry as a spiritual and moral lever, believing that art was able to change the world.”

According to the poetess, the seminar’s aim is to help its participants become creators and sculptors of their narrations. Answering the questions about her profession choice, Michelle told: “First, I wanted to write novels, however, I couldn’t manage to create a finished plot. I like how the music of a language sounds in poetry, with all this going on I used to write everything what I felt a need for. Even if poetry wasn’t my profession, I would devote myself to it, because poetry is something what I wholly control. Poetry is my world”.

Michelle Cahn Brown recommends those, who just start their poetic way, to read, travel and be thirsty for knowledge as much as possible. “I think, nowadays, poetry is undeservedly misapprehended. In my opinion, we should try to perceive poetry as a form of delight, but not as something very serious.”

Now Michelle is a Fulbright scholar, and she is аn author of the Year of the Horse hybrid blog.

Michelle has taught literature and creative writing speech at the University of Michigan, and also on the conference of young writers at the University of Virginia. Besides this, she has worked as a writer, teaching literature at Pomfret School, and also as the head of the Broken Bridge Summer Arts Workshops. Michelle has been a holder of the Candyman and Rackham scholarships at the University of Michigan, and also the editor of the Drunken Boat online journal.

Michelle Chan Brown’s Double Agent was the winner of the 2012 Kore First Book Award, judged by Bhanu Kapil. Her book Motherland, with Wolves is forthcoming in 2015, it won the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize in 2014. Michelle’s poems, surveys and articles have appeared in in Blackbird, Cimarron Review, The Missouri Review, Witness and many other journals and anthologies

Photo by Rufina Torpischeva